A new era begins: I finally upgraded to STEREO!

[Rednaxela]

But it seems y'all did and that was the response on AGF too so I take it seriously.

One more data point.

Played over carefully EQ’d but not necessarily ASR approved active bookshelves in a regular living room arrangement, there was no boominess for me. Just utterly enjoyable guitar sound, great playing and a beautiful video.

The fraudulence stuff I don’t know about. Apparently it’s from other discussions that I haven’t followed. Your recording sounds gorgeous here. Both on my headphones and my stereo.

Hope this helps your quest a little.

 

[Multicore]

Hope this helps your quest a little.

Yes, it does. It helps me to remind me that good enough is good enough. And I appreciate the encouragement too. Thanks!

 

[Multicore]

Btw @bluefuzz you might get a chuckle from this: at 0:40 in that Oootoob I reached for a different pick. I wasn't getting enough power in harmonics 5 and up so I ditched the round-tipped Wegen Fatone for something with a sharp tip. Maybe we could work out a comedy bit: guitarists arguing about picks interrupted by my friend Gav who wants to tell us about his philosophy of making bassoon reeds.

 

[EERecordist]

For the first time in my not short life I am making stereo recordings. Some of you have experienced my polemics about this dubious creature called stereo that's typically found skulking somewhere in the neighborhood of Silly and often visiting Fraudulent in the great metropolis of Overrated. But now I have a pair of Line Audio CM4 SDCs and I'm learning to use them to record my acoustic guitar. So far the result using coincident close-mic arrangement sounds great, at least relative to everything else I've managed to date. This kind of recording is of course completely fraudulent and a bit silly but the result is: nice.

Congratulations on beginning the journey of microphone placement. The CM4 are very well respected for the price. In the SDC world many say only Schoeps, Sennheiser, and DPA do better at 5x+ the price. Try evaluating your microphone placement with headphones, and as many friend's speaker system/rooms as you can, including recording studio control rooms. I may get some CM4s myself, and this past December B&H had Schoeps cardioids at half off.

 

[bluefuzz]

so I ditched the round-tipped Wegen Fatone for something with a sharp tip

The trouble with guitars is they radiate sound in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. What sounds good to you as the player doesn't necessarily sound good to the audience or, as you have discovered, to the microphone. FWIW I preferred the sound before you changed picks ... ;-)

interrupted by my friend Gav who wants to tell us about his philosophy of making bassoon reeds.

I'm in!

I once had a colleague who could expound at length on the relative merits of the mechanics of 18th Century Hammerklavier. Fascinating stuff ...

 

[Multicore]

The trouble with guitars is they radiate sound in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. What sounds good to you as the player doesn't necessarily sound good to the audience or, as you have discovered, to the microphone. FWIW I preferred the sound before you changed picks ... ;-)

I'm gonna tilt the guitar up more so I get a better listen.

 

[Robin L]

What are the microphones? (Edit, I see you already answered that). In my experience, Neumann KM 84s were particularly good for guitars, (especially classical nylon string), AKG 451s for steel strung guitars. I would guess that Schoeps Colette microphones would also be good, though I have limited experience with those. Looks like all of those are much more expensive than what you've already got. I really regret not buying KM 84s when I had the chance, they were the best all-round microphones I have ever used. Everything I recorded was in stereo. I had the best luck with ORTF (French Radio, the microphones are cardioid, near coincident, 105 degrees angled out, seven inches apart on a microphone stereo bar). Have used other configurations for larger ensembles or pianos.

 

[Blumlein 88]

What are the microphones? (Edit, I see you already answered that). In my experience, Neumann KM 84s were particularly good for guitars, (especially classical nylon string), AKG 451s for steel strung guitars. I would guess that Schoeps Colette microphones would also be good, though I have limited experience with those. Looks like all of those are much more expensive than what you've already got. I really regret not buying KM 84s when I had the chance, they were the best all-round microphones I have ever used. Everything I recorded was in stereo. I had the best luck with ORTF (French Radio, the microphones are cardioid, near coincident, 105 degrees angled out, seven inches apart on a microphone stereo bar). Have used other configurations for larger ensembles or pianos.

I have some Warm Audio WM 84 clones of the KM 84s (Cinemag xfrms). They are really good. Currently my favorite microphone. I have not had hands on a KM84. They are in cardioid living up to the Warm name as they are a little on the warm sounding side. I wonder if the Cinemag xfrmr is better on the lowe end than the original. The omni isn't so warm sounding. I've been meaning to measure them vs my Umik 1 just to see if they match spec on the FR which is shown as being quite close to the KM84 with a bit more than the KM84 below 200 hz.

 

[Robin L]

I have some Warm Audio WM 84 clones of the KM 84s (Cinemag xfrms). They are really good. Currently my favorite microphone. I have not had hands on a KM84. They are in cardioid living up to the Warm name as they are a little on the warm sounding side. I wonder if the Cinemag xfrmr is better on the lowe end than the original. The omni isn't so warm sounding. I've been meaning to measure them vs my Umik 1 just to see if they match spec on the FR which is shown as being quite close to the KM84 with a bit more than the KM84 below 200 hz.

A friend who is a professional recordist loaned me his KM 84s, on another gig I rented a pair of Klaus Heyne modified KM 84s, they had a lower noise floor than the standard version. Both worked really well with the types of recordings I was doing at the time, often remote recordings of live performances of classical music, frequently small Baroque ensembles. I wound up with the op amp version of the KM 84's, KM 140s. I didn't like them as much, though they were sonically close. Also had KM 130s, the replacement for the omni KM 83. They were all very useful: the two KM 140s established firm imaging, I used three KM 130s with them for hall ambience and fattening out the bottom frequencies. Recorded orchestras and choruses with that setup.

 

[bluefuzz]

I'm gonna tilt the guitar up more so I get a better listen.

There's a reason many guitarists adopt that position, especially when in 'solo noodling' mode ...

 

[Multicore]

There's a reason many guitarists adopt that position, especially when in 'solo noodling' mode ...

View attachment 360767

It all starts with the hair, doesn't it? It starts with the hair and works down. With hair that good you can wear a mustache like that. Actually you should. And with hair an mustache like that you've simply gotta wear a fruity flowery cravat. With that ensemble, and of course it does no harm to have the looks of OSS 117, you can do anything, ... anything ... even playing the funniest kind of jazz ever invented.

If the devil offered me a second go around with one change ...

 

[Multicore]

Today I learned about the Gerzon stereo array. Wait, what, that Gerzon, the Michael Gerson who was recording engineer on over a half dozen awesome CDs I bought back when they were new. Yes, indeed.

I tried it arranged horizontally (because ears usually are) 12 inch from the guitar and it seemed nice to me. But it sounds off center and compensating for that with pan does something I don't like. Maybe being off center is ok. And I'm hearing room modes around 180 Hz that are bugging me.

I really gotta quit this mic noodling and get back to guitar noodling.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Today I learned about the Gerzon stereo array. Wait, what, that Gerzon, the Michael Gerson who was recording engineer on over a half dozen awesome CDs I bought back when they were new. Yes, indeed.

I tried it arranged horizontally (because ears usually are) 12 inch from the guitar and it seemed nice to me. But it sounds off center and compensating for that with pan does something I don't like. Maybe being off center is ok. And I'm hearing room modes around 180 Hz that are bugging me.

I really gotta quit this mic noodling and get back to guitar noodling.

Yes a good technique. Only for SDCs however. Your Line Audio mics are perfect for this.

 

[Multicore]

Yes a good technique. Only for SDCs however. Your Line Audio mics are perfect for this.

In the SOS article Hugh Robjohns wrote

My only word of caution is that the Gerzon array’s wide mutual angle means that central sound sources arrive well off‑axis (65 degrees) to both mics, so good‑quality cardioids, with a very consistent polar pattern across the full bandwidth, out to at least 90 degrees, are required. Most decent small‑diaphragm mics should be fine, but be wary of large‑diaphragm models, and if the sound character of central sources seems tonally ‘coloured’, try different mics!

 

[Multicore]

I tried the Gerzon array. And I also tried X-Y at 110 degrees. Both resulted in such a different quality of sound in the two channels that I wouldn't even call it stereo. It just sounded weird in both cases and all I could find to make something nice to listen to from it on cans was downmix to mono. I think the reason these aren't working is the mics are very close to the guitar so if the angle is wide one is pointing at the sound-hole and bridge while the other at the nut.

So I tried a narrower angle. This recording is X-Y somewhere between 60 and 70 degrees. I don't find the stereo on this distracting (except a bass not at about 4:05). It's enough difference between the tracks to remove that weird effect of having a sound source right in the middle of my skull but it sounds like one thing, not a thing with two disjointed close mics.

This is a different guitar, a Furch all mahogany OM, i.e. a shallow body concert size guitar.

 

[Multicore]

I've had to attend to a lot of things besides music but yesterday finally made a new recording that I like musically enough to publish on youtube. X-Y pair angle is 50 to 60 degrees. About 8 inch away, slightly below the mid-line of the guitar pointing slightly up at roughly the neck joint.

I recorded 48 kHz 24 bit and rendered the upload file with FLAC audio in the mp4 container. I could listen to it in yt's format ID 251 which is 2ch Opus 157kbps 48kHz (right click on the video, choose "Stats for nerds". See table below for other audio formats). Sounds good.

ID  EXT   RESOLUTION FPS CH │   FILESIZE    TBR PROTO │ VCODEC           VBR ACODEC      ABR ASR MORE INFO
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
233 mp4   audio only        │                   m3u8  │ audio only           unknown             [ja] Default
234 mp4   audio only        │                   m3u8  │ audio only           unknown             [ja] Default
139 m4a   audio only      2 │    3.27MiB    49k https │ audio only           mp4a.40.5   49k 22k [ja] low, m4a_dash
140 m4a   audio only      2 │    8.68MiB   129k https │ audio only           mp4a.40.2  129k 44k [ja] medium, m4a_dash
251 webm  audio only      2 │   10.49MiB   157k https │ audio only           opus       157k 48k [ja] medium, webm_dash
18  mp4   640x360     30  2 │   40.26MiB   601k https │ avc1.42001E          mp4a.40.2       44k [ja] 360p

 

[bluefuzz]

a new recording

Nice! Sounds very natural in earbuds (latest Apple noise cancelling thingies). I haven't listened on speakers. If I close my eyes I can imagine it is a 'real' guitar. I couldn't hear any untoward room noise so you could maybe go further away from the guitar without issue. There was a hint of boominess on the low notes but nothing offensive.

Since getting my new toy I have been mucking about with similar issues: trying to get a useable stereo setup for recording acoustic guitars. I've never had a stereo looper before and have mostly used electric guitars in the past for that sort of thing with my old EDP. I suddenly got the urge to attempt some acoustic loopiness. Since building all these guitars it's probably about time to try and use them in anger, so to speak. As yet the biggest challenge is finding some floor space in my small and incredibly messy living space to set up a couple of mics ...

 

[Multicore]

Nice! Sounds very natural in earbuds (latest Apple noise cancelling thingies). I haven't listened on speakers. If I close my eyes I can imagine it is a 'real' guitar. I couldn't hear any untoward room noise so you could maybe go further away from the guitar without issue. There was a hint of boominess on the low notes but nothing offensive.

That's very useful feedback. Thanks.

Since getting my new toy I have been mucking about with similar issues: trying to get a useable stereo setup for recording acoustic guitars. I've never had a stereo looper before and have mostly used electric guitars in the past for that sort of thing with my old EDP. I suddenly got the urge to attempt some acoustic loopiness. Since building all these guitars it's probably about time to try and use them in anger, so to speak. As yet the biggest challenge is finding some floor space in my small and incredibly messy living space to set up a couple of mics ...

Can you, while using the Loupé, hold your position on the mics? I doubt I could. When I thought about plugging an acoustic into my looping rig I concluded I'd use the Fishman Rare Earth Mic Blend, for a number of practical and aesthetic reasons. But I haven't done it yet and maybe won't. I like the wide distance between an artificial/electronic/synthetic practice on the one hand, like this, and a natural/acoustic/documentary practice like above.

 

[bluefuzz]

Can you, while using the Loupé, hold your position on the mics?

Too early to tell. With the sort of thing I envisage doing with the Loupé I'm not sure it matters. In the few stereo micing experiments I have made, any movement hasn't bothered me. In any case, if I can't somehow incorporate it in the performance then nothing will get recorded anyway. The trick is making it sound like you meant it ... ;-)

When I thought about plugging an acoustic into my looping rig I concluded I'd use the Fishman Rare Earth Mic Blend, for a number of practical and aesthetic reasons.

I would prefer not to put pickups in my acoustics. Part of the reason I became interested in acoustic guitars was to get away from the rabbithole of pickups and pedals and wires (how I hate wires and cables and leads and plugs etc.), but I can see even a simple stereo mic setup is becoming more complicated than I had hoped. Oh well ...